Engineering a little happiness through the world of crafting

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Monthly Archives: August 2007

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I’ll be teaching two A Muse classes at Stamp Salado in Salado, Texas in September and October. The registration opened up yesterday. If you are interested, here are more details. Hope to see you there! Sandy at Stamp Salado is awesome and she’s funny, too. Check out the article she’s written about A Muse and me! It’s in the newsletter (click on newsletter).

Sometimes I get to listen to the morning radio show in the car when I’m by myself. I used to listen to it on the way to work back in the day. Today, I got to listen to it after I dropped my son off. I was pretty teary-eyed but I got most of the tears out last night! Anyway, this radio show is local and has been on for 10 or so years. The DJs for the morning show are my age and seem to have similar life milestones. One of the DJs took his 5 year old daughter to kindergarten this morning. I knew if I listened to them, I’d get to laugh a bit. Sure enough.

The dad/DJ was talking about walking his daughter in and how the teacher was holding a bouquet of flowers that some kid had given her. And then the other DJs proceeded to talk about how that kid is the “trouble-maker” or the teacher’s pet, etc. etc. UH OH….
I sent a “gift” with my son for his teacher. Um, how could I not? It was an opportunity to STAMP something. HELLO? So, now I say… uh oh.
When I went down to San Antonio to visit Jenn a month ago, I bought the Stampendous Teacher set for the paint cans. And I already had some acrylic paint cans from Stamp Salado (from my birthday trip)… so Voila! I put a bunch of chocolate nuggets in there and 8 3×3 cards with envelopes. I hope she likes it.

I also had to make a card for her, right? Well, of course, I did. And I really like the new A Muse school stuff. So, here’s the card I made. I CASED it from the wonderfully, talented Jennifer Pebbles on the A Muse design studio. I changed it a bit but it’s pretty much her design. Thanks Jennifer! It’s that little school house cute?

I know he’s going to have a GREAT time. His teacher is awesome. His classroom is awesome. The girl next door will be in his class. They’ve been buddies since birth! He’s so ready.

Anyway, you know how I’m ultra-paranoid about putting details about the boys on the net. Well, I’m the same way about them in real life. I know his stuff needs to be labeled. But I didn’t want to put his name on it. I have visions of the bad guy saying “Hey, , you’re mom told me to pick you up?” KWIM? Anyway, I’ve been coaching him and really that’s the hardest and best job to do but I don’t need to ADVERTISE his name either, right?
So, I made these luggage tags out of those Xyron Luggage Tags (if you see these anywhere, get them!). I snagged mine from a nice lady on Splitcoast a while back. Anyway, here they are on his lunch box. I decided to just go with my last name. That works, right? And well, the super hero dude from A Muse. I used the new Stampin’ Up ABC Alphabet (seemed appropriate!) for the name.

Well, I’m off to finish up some tasks and then off to bed. I’m ready. He’s ready. It’ll all be okay.

Did someone mention gifts? Well, it’s that time of year (yes, I know!) to start *thinking* about gifts… teacher gifts, Christmas gifts, Halloween treats, Hey, it’s Wed. gifts, etc. Last year I had a class every month starting in August through November that was all about gifts. Little gifts, big gifts, whatever. Just ideas! Most of the ideas come from Splitcoast… that place is AWESOME. Have you looked in the gallery under “Anything but a card?” Anyway, since the classes were so popular, I was requested to do them again this year…and well, I LOVE to make gifts, so here we are. Last night was my first one for this season. We made 3 gifts. All the ladies were very quick at them.
Marbles:

The first is a sampling of magnets. These are the clear ones that you make from Floral marbles. We used the set Tagger’s Dozen and a 1″ circle punch.

Lastly, we did nugget boxes. Mainly because I have a baby shower (remember? for my SIL) this weekend that I wanted to make these for. The tutorial for these (and different sizes ones, too) can be found here.

These are cute little boxes that hold 3 Hershey’s nuggets. The nuggets are wrapped with stamped Avery Labels. Here’s the one we did for the class last night in Soft Sky with the So Swirly wheel.
The stamp from the tag is from a Level 3 hostess set.
For my SIL’s shower, I’m making PINK ones… and I used the retired SU! baby rattle wheel. I need to make a few more of these before Saturday!

Anyway, there you have it 3 gift ideas that don’t take much time to make but are so appreciated when received!

I hope some of these ideas help you do your gift giving this fall and Holiday season!

I had my two hostess clubs both meet last week. This is the first time in 2 years that I taught the same techniques to both clubs and the same cards! The stampers in both groups have different levels of experience so it never worked out before!

I have to admit, I CASED two of the three cards this month. They were just so perfect for the technique, not to mention that I just love them.

First up, the birthday card that Jenn sent me. The technique was to make scallops with the corner rounder.

A little of topic…. when I was growing up, my mom used to paint oil paintings for her hobby. Now, she crochets. And she’s amazing at it. All of my life, I have told people she’s an artist, I’m a crafter. There is a difference. It’s like those people that can play music by ear versus those that learn to read music. There is a difference. Another example and my point here… is there are those people who can EYEBALL their paper and cut it perfectly and then there are those people like me that measure everything. Jenn is in that first category… she’s the artist, I’m the crafter. I mean no disrespect to any of you that are in “my” category. Of course not. I just think there is a difference. The artist types have something in them that I don’t. Can see things that I don’t. It’s amazing to me!

So, Jenn doesn’t measure anything (so she says!) and it always looks fabulous (as you know). Well, once an engineer… always an engineer and what do you mean NEVER measure anything. Egads! On her b’day card to me, she eyeballed it and precisely cut it. Check out that white layer hanging over the bayou. This seems to stump a lot of the ladies in my class. And I completely understand their frustration. Maybe I should ask Jenn to teach me! Here’s her card. I posted it a while back.
On to card two. Card two shows how to use the new SU! Crop-a-dile to set eyelets, punch holes, etc. I also showed the trick on how to do some cool dry embossing with it. I COMPLETELY cased Debbie Olson’s fabulous card (Thinking Inking is her blog and DebbieDesigns is her SCS Login). I’m sure you know her. Her style is always so clean. I’m very drawn to her. In fact, because of this card of hers, I HAD to buy the baroque background (it’s not my style, remember?). Very clean and elegant. I added an eyelet to hers for the technique. THANKS Debbie for the inspiration and the CASE. 🙂 Here is my rendition. The new SU! taffeta ribbon is GORGEOUS. I don’t miss the organdy anymore.

Finally, the last card is my design. Some of my customers wanted to see dry embossing again (but we’ve done that technique) so I wanted to incorporate something with that. So, this technique is paper piercing (like with the classy brass templates not just the grid template). I like this card but not the colors. I’m not a fan of the Groovy Guava. Nope, that’s not me. But it goes with the wasabi and the saffron but I still don’t like it! Anyway, there is piercing on the saffron piece and on the butterfly. The dry embossing was done on the SU! light table with the Priceless class brass template. I like that part of the card. And isn’t the new SU! scallop punch cute? Look Jenn, I used dimensionals. I seem to be bad at doing that so I’m trying to get better!